THE NEW YORKER ing with Hugh Gaitskell, the head of the British Labour Party, who has just gone home after a week divided be- tween New York and Washington. He received us in a friend's apartment in River House, where he and his wife were staYIng. "It's a little grand for us," Mrs. Gaitskell said. "It belongs to Mrs. Louise Stewart, a frIend of ours who's a great friend of the T rumans " "A staunch Democrat," said Mr. Gaitskell, a tall, blue-eyed man with a nice smile, a blue suit, a shIrt with tiny checks, and a pinkish tie. "She's also a great friend of Perle Mesta." We sat down on a plush chair and learned that our host was born in Lon- don fifty years ago, the son of an Indian Civil Service official. He went to Ox- ford, and in 1926, while there, bor- rowed a car from a friend at the time of the General Strike and drove to London and back, bringing copies of the British W orkf'r, the strikers' paper, for distribution in Oxford. "My first po- litical activity," he said. "1 instinctive- ly sided with the strikers. I joined the Labour Club, and later got a job with the Workers' Educational Association, lecturing to adults in the Midlands. I also spoke for various Labour candidates for Parliament and lectured on political L d U . ." economvat on on nlverslty. "He's a very good speaker," Mrs. Gaitskell said. "He made a serious talk at the convention of the InternatIonal Ladies' Garment \V orkers' Union at Atlantic City a couple of days ago, and his listeners were riveted. They ap- plauded almost every sentence." "My wife's a very good cook," Mr. Gaitskell said. "Her cheesecake is fa- mous. She makes a special pâté. We have a large Victorian house in Hamp- stead, where our children roll up the carpet and dance. Two daughters- Julia, seventeen, and Cressida, nearly f " ourteen. "We lIke to dance ourselves," Mrs. Gaitskell said. "We were at the Vil- lage Vanguard last night." "I also went to the Vanguard in 1950," Mr. Gaitskell said. "I was here on a mission, as Minister of State for Economic Affairs, and had just been advised by transatlantic phone that I had been made Chancellor of the Ex- chequer and must return at once. I though t, My last night of freedom! Why not go dancing?" "We let the top floor of our house," Mrs Gaitskell said. "Hugh's mother and stepfather live with us part of the time, and we keep a room for his brother Arthur when he's in tavln." "Five years my senior," Mr. Gait- skell said. "He's mostly in the Sudan. He's genera] manager of Gezira, a government-and-private-industry cot- ton scheme something like your Ten- nessee Valley Authority. The Sudanese government provides the irrigation, the company gins the cotton. Arthur's an expert on Africa as a whole." "Not a Socialist, but a nice guy," Mrs. Gaitskell said. "My sister, Mrs. Hubert Ashton, IS married to a Conservative M.P.," Mr. Gaitskell said. "She was a famous cricketer in her time. Her husband's a very nice fellow. Our family was originally Scandinavian-probably goes right back to the Viking period. They settled in Cumberland, where there's a village called Gatesgill. Gaitskell's a very unusual name in England. It's rather fun. Occasionally I get letters from other GaItskells. One, in Santa Barbara-a man of seventy-two- wanted to know if he was a relation. I looked it up in the family tree and found he was a third cousin." Mr Gaitskel1 told us he was lunch- ing with Governor HarrIman that day 27 and going to Washington the next.. "I propose to tell the President that I wouldn't invite the Russians here un- less they paid a very high price for it," he said. "They'll need much more security here than in England." "I've bought a few lipsticks here," Mrs. Gaitskell said. "They haven't got the latest lipsticks in London." Summary W E'VE been haunted by an ex- change we overheard in a de- scending elevator in our office building at one minute past five the other after- noon. "A year and seven months, and what have I accomplished?" one young lady was saying to another. "You got a new desk," her com- panion replied encouragingly. "1 changed my seat," said the first girl bitterly. "A year and seven months, and I changed my seat. What an ac- complishmen t , " We have no observations to make on this colloquy, except that there may be the germ of a Paddy Chayefsky play in it. ß? I I I I ý1 ((Say, how'd the dance turn out "